West Oakland group sues port to halt expansion plan

Sandra Ann Harris, SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, October 7, 1997

1997-10-07 04:00:00 PDT OAKLAND -- OAKLAND - A West Oakland neighborhood has filed a federal lawsuit against the Port of Oakland to stop construction of its $500-million expansion, claiming the massive project violates environmental laws because it stands to create dangerous levels of air pollution, noise and traffic.

"Our neighborhood has a lot of environmental problems as it is," said community leader Karin Mac Donald. "The neighborhood and I, we're not opposed to the port expansion, but we see a real problem with the increase in truck traffic."

Mac Donald is co-chair of West Oakland Neighbors, a community group that has teamed up with Golden Gate University law school's environmental law clinic to sue the Port of Oakland as well as several federal agencies, including the U.S. Navy, which has approved a plan to lease the port several hundred acres for its project.

In a complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Oakland, the neighborhood group claims the expansion

"will cause significant adverse environmental and health impacts to the predominately lower-income, minority community of West Oakland."

Furthermore, the complaint accuses the port and federal agencies of violating state and federal environmental laws in approving the project's Environmental Impact Report in September because they allegedly failed to gather enough public input and poorly assessed environmental impacts and mitigation solutions.

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Port of Oakland officials said Monday they had not seen the lawsuit and could not respond specifically to its claims, but denied environmental laws had been broken in the project's approval process.

"We have been working very diligently with any group that's involved and concerned in resolving any issues that are outstanding," said Dan Westerlin, the port's manager of strategic marketing in the maritime division.

"You can't be everything to everybody, but we're a good neighbor."

The sweeping port expansion plan, which has been dubbed Vision 2000, calls for more dredging, the extension of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad line from Richmond into the West Oakland port, and the development of about 220 acres of former navy land into new terminals and five new berths.

The federal lawsuit asks a judge to step in and halt the project until the environmental issues are sorted out. Residents say, however, they don't really want to stop construction at the port, but they do want port and federal authorities to come up with a plan to mitigate the anticipated increases in traffic and other environmental hazards.

The environmental impact report approved by port officials found that environmental hazards created by the project were "unmitigatable."

"If they can't eliminate pollution, they have to do whatever they can to minimize it," said Professor Alan Ramo of Golden Gate University. "Their attitude was since we can't eliminate the impact, we won't do anything."

In another tactic to try to make the port build environmental accountability into the project, Ramo said he was weighing filing a civil rights complaint against the U.S. Department of Transportation to stop the agency from using federal funds to pay for the project.

"West Oakland is a predominately African American community, and this project, we believe, will disproportionately affect them," Ramo said, explaining that it's illegal for federal agencies to fund projects that are racially discriminatory.

"I'd like to see the port take care of the environmental problems," Ramo said. "I'm hoping that the threat of losing funding will make them do what's right for the community." &lt;